Chris Swanson’s Song of the Month:
Dwight Twilley “Looking for the Magic”

I so badly wish that I could remember who first sent me the link to the “Looking for the Magic” video. I’d love nothing more than to shake his hand and give him credit every time I play this song with friends and talk about magic (this happens a lot). I’d like to raise a toast to him. Because it matters who shared a song with you, who you were with and where you were when you first heard a song. It’s part of the story. Part of the context. It’s the tip of the berg. It’s how your relationship with the song began, the headlights in the foggy distance that first alerted you to something larger heading your way, something awesome this way coming.

I remember where I was. I was sitting in my old office, where I worked from 2004 to 2008. The only window in the room was my computer screen. Man, did I see a lot through that screen during those four years. I remember somebody cold-sending me the link without any other info. I clicked it and there was Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Dwight Twilley, a man whose music I knew very little about aside from the fact that it was respected by the nerdy-yet-unimpeachable power pop literati. I got a crash course. Looking like a Doors-era Val Kilmer at the keys, Twilley leads his band through a hall of fame-worthy lip synch performance in the video (shot for the ill-fated Saturday morning UK kids show The W.A.C.K.O. Show), giving words, melody & boogie to something I’ve been feeling my whole life.

All my life I’m looking for the magic /  I’ve been looking for the magic

Never had it been put so well to me, made so simple. Looking for the magic. It’s what’s been driving me since adolescence, propelling me through life. My pursuit of the magic is, for better or worse, what’s been establishing both my hierarchy of priorities as well as my criteria for happiness. It’s the hydra-headed good and bad angel moored between my shoulder blades with a tight grip on my reins as I gallop through life. Coming in so many sizes & shapes, it is not always easy to find.  But when you do find the magic, nothing need be left to imagination.

No doubt about it, this song has the magic. Its production (credited to Bob Schaper and Oister, the latter of which was the original name of the Dwight Twilley Band) is perfect. The keys set the pace, the bass sets the bop and the slap delay vocals are the sirens on top of this streetcar in hot pursuit of ecstasy. It’s unclear whether Twilley is aware that he’s swimming in it, barely keeping his head above crazed water, nearly drowning in magic as he asks for more. Another heaping portion, please.

It was released in 1977, on his second album Twilley Don’t Mind, on Shelter Records–a label owned by Leon Russell and also home to J.J. Cale, Russell himself, The Gap Band and up-and-coming rocker Tom Petty (yes, that’s a pre-stardom TP on bass in the video, looking VERY Janice Muppet from The Electric Mayhem). It’s a perfect song. It’s a modus operandi.

Ed. Note: Chris Swanson comes to us from Dead Oceans/Jagjaguwar/Secretly Canadian HQ in Bloomington, Indiana, and he’d like you to know that this entry technically classifies as “April,” which means that today is April 34th.  Adjust your calendars, and expect a May joint anytime now.  In the meantime, refresh yourself with his magic words on Van Morrison, Caroline Crawford, Dion, Mad Season, Donnie & Joe Emerson, and Pip Proud.

Filed under: Chris Swanson  Dwight Twilley  Janice Muppet from the Electric Mayhem  Tom Petty